A FAMILY in Brazil were left stunned after 41-year-old Gilberto Araujo turned up at his own wake.

Gilberto’s brother, Jose, received a call to tell him his brother had been murdered – requesting that he go to the city morgue and identify the body.

Jose identified the body as his brother and arrangements were made by the family for the wake and funeral.

However after family and neighbours had gathered in his mother’s home for the wake, they were stunned when Gilberto strolled in alive and well.

He told the room: “Guys, I’m alive, pinch me!” – his mother Maria told a local newspaper that some of those present fainted, while others fled in terror.

“The confusion started when news started circulating that a car washer had been shot dead,” Jose’s wife, Ana, told the UOL internet news site. “Police called my husband and told him that his brother had been killed and his body was at the morgue.”

The body has since been identified as Genivaldo Santos Gama, and was returned to the morgue.

Roberto Lima, a police inspector, said the confusion was “understandable.”

He added that the two men “closely resembled each other and both worked as car washers.”